7.

Woo Your Customers: The Power of the Thrill

When the pundits were opining on South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s erratic behavior in courting an Argentinean mistress, leaving the country, and going AWOL without notice, a wise observer homed in with amazing precision on the cause of the politico’s wild escapade: “He is madly in love with someone new. That always leads to temporary insanity.”

It may seem at first blush that Sanford’s dalliance has zero to do with business, but in an odd way, it gets directly at the core of a powerful life force that manifests itself (in a perfectly ethical way) in the best businesses—and actually becomes their hallmark.

The first rush of new love is so wildly intoxicating that it blurs one’s judgment and prompts the kind of giddy optimism that makes one feel as if all is wonderful in the world, and furthermore that everything is possible; a sitting governor can vanish, lie about his whereabouts, fly off to make passionate love to a mystery woman, and convince himself that no one will know a thing about it.

It can only be ascribed to Temporary Insanity.

Temporary Insanity

In the strange brew that is life, we can fear and pursue something simultaneously. This seeming disconnect might look a bit bipolar. I mean, who would purposely do that? Do you want to be insane? Of course not. But wait. Do you want the joy of a sensation that is so powerful and exhilarating that it liberates you, temporarily, from the laws of physics—and the confines of daily life—so that the impossible becomes absolutely within the realm of your control?

Of course you do. The brand of temporary insanity that springs from new love is so deliciously intoxicating that it drove England’s King Edward VIII to abdicate his throne (to marry an American divorcée) and prompts millions who barely know each other to tie the knot at Vegas drive-in chapels.

The Ivy League schools don’t teach a single course on love or the sensation of thrill related to it. Nor do they cover the temporary insanity it can create. This is a shortcoming of immense proportions, not because of the lost benefits to the social sciences or psychology fields, but for the study, insight, and understanding it could bring to businesses. A solid grasp on the power of the thrill illuminates how great businesses attain their vaunted position—and then secure it for generations, as well as provide clues on why they tend not to decline or, if they do lose their bearings, how they regain them.

A Lesson in Love

At a time in my life when I might have gone to Princeton, I went to a far superior university known as Paris. In my brief time living there, I fell in love a dozen times. Each one felt like forever. In every single case, I was magnificently, temporarily insane.

Many years later, as I built my marketing firm and began to fuse the experiences of my life into a business methodology, I reflected on how important it is to provide service in such a way that customers and prospects make the transition from liking what my firm had to offer to absolutely loving it, and also how key it is, in the course of this transition, for us to thrill them with the quality and depth of the epiphanies I’ve had over the years.

One such epiphany I’ve been blessed with is this: if those who patronize your business for the first time or the hundredth do it simply because they like your products or services, you will fail. Liking you is not enough. Your goal must be to infuse what you do and who you do it for with so much attention and innovation that the objects of your devotion fall in love. And not simply in love, but go all-out, gung-ho insane, where they believe that they just cannot or will not do without the offerings you are providing to them.

People didn’t care that Walt Disney was a high school dropout. They fell head over heels for the films and the Magic Kingdom. And speaking of heels, women don’t slide on a pair of Manolo Blahnik stilettos and feel like they made a good purchase. They are sure they just had the best sex of their lives. Why? They are temporarily insane. So much so that they will spend $750 on these stylish shoes and thank Mr. Blahnik for the privilege of letting them do so. They behave this way because this Spanish fashion designer thrills them over and over again.

Great business is when the art and science of romance connect in some wonderfully mysterious way to commerce. What must you do to make it happen in your company? Every day you go to work, you must have one overriding ambition: to get your customers to go “insane.” Not just once, but day after day, month after month, year after year. It starts with temporary insanity and moves along a continuum to everlasting love. That is both the hallmark of a great business—and the thrust of the rest of this book. We all need to get there or we are simply wandering through Mediocreville without a compass.

Entering the Thrill Zone

Sometimes in life—and, in turn, in business—the most powerful concepts sit right in front of our eyes and yet we are blind to them.

As business owners and managers, we are aware of and try to achieve such common and noble goals as:

• Customer satisfaction
• High quality
• Courteous service
• A satisfying experience

But the most important goal, and the power it can unleash to distinguish and drive the growth of a business, is almost universally omitted from the managerial handbook. That is the power to thrill.

When a business thrills a customer or client, the relationship this spawns produces enormous energy, organic growth, viral advocacy, and a near-impenetrable barrier to entry.

Working to go beyond satisfactory performance all the way to ensuring that customers are continually thrilled is an intriguing and beguiling compass for achieving a rare state of business supremacy that is:

• A magnet for customers who, once exposed to its exceptionalism, become its viral advocates;
• A daunting barrier to entry more powerful than a proprietary technology or a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign.
• The virtual license to escape the bounds of comodization in any industry and to qualify for rich and sustainable margins.

A business that thrills never does so by accident. It happens when management makes a decision to surpass the traditional business model that is associated with clichés such as:

• Good service
• Reliable products
• Well-trained people
• Customer courtesy

All of the above rules of the standard business playbook are sound and important, but they are simply the price of admission in a competitive marketplace, far removed from the all-important dynamic of exceptionalism.

All Made Up and Looking Gorgeous: How Revlon Won Over Its Customers

From the day Charles Revson launched Revlon with $300, he was driven to the point of obsession to build a clientele, a following, that worshipped the company’s products, would gobble up every brand extension he brought to market, and would never tolerate competitors (Revson viewed them as imitators) of any kind. He would accomplish this not primarily with slick advertising campaigns (although he did advertise heavily and effectively) but first and foremost with a religious zeal to create and maintain a product line that exhilarated women in search of what I call the Marilyn Monroe Factor (more on that in the next chapter).

The achievement of a state of thrill can only be born from an unorthodox approach, as anything out of the standard playbook is just that: Standard. Meaning it’s ordinary and predictable. Instead of delegating the goal of Revlon’s exceptionalism to a quality control group of middle management bureaucrats, Revson took full leadership for achieving the Thrill Factor:

1. He replaced the dyes commonly used in the production of nail polish with pure pigments to provide a vastly superior appearance.
2. He tested the products on his own nails, rejecting the idea that such behavior was unbecoming in a CEO—and a male to boot. Revson knew that the “well-respected” rules trapped companies in the straits of mediocrity.
3. He would man the customer feedback phone lines, determined to hear for himself what women said about his products, engaging them in dialogue, and thus ensuring that none of his managers kept “bad news” from the boss. “The reason I talk to them,” Revson said of the customer calls, “is that they are the real boss.”
4. He vastly expanded the palette of product colors, recognizing that the ability to make his customers appear original and at the vanguard of fashion would be his most potent asset.

Today, business leaders are distanced from their products and services. Telecom executives run car companies, accountants lead retailers, financiers operate whatever enterprises they acquire. Most are textbook figureheads with book knowledge but no sense, instinct, or passion for the product they are selling and, in turn, its marketplace. This intellectual and visceral distance from those you are serving and what you are serving them renders it virtually impossible to get to thrilled.

Disney’s Magic

This gap between company policy and customer aspiration is often the reason once-stellar companies lose their magic. Walt Disney was driven above all else absolutely to tantalize his customers. The business he created was simply a vessel in which he would house his Cartoon Imagination. Just the thought of people lost in a fantasyland he created—replete with talking ducks and an irresistible mouse—left him giddy and striving relentlessly to find new ways to thrill and delight. Walt’s speech marking the opening day of Disneyland captured this exhilaration and the philosophy behind it:

To all who come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past…and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America…with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.

When Disney died in 1966, the extraordinary empire he built fell into the hands of financial engineers, determined to drive profitability at the expense of reinvesting in the thrill factor. Distanced from the goal of enchanting customers, from the dreamlike imagination embedded in the founder’s psyche (and, in turn, his business practices), the suits ensconced in the corporate suite allowed a legendary company to slide into mediocrity. Only when Michael Eisner was recruited to take the reins after years of neglect did Disney reconnect to its past and insist once again on thrilling customers, as opposed to simply allowing them to enter the grounds of what had become just another amusement park.

Treat Your Customers Like Royalty—or Family

The conventional components of customer service (just the term customer service sounds like a chore as opposed to a joy) are light-years away from achieving a fusion of elements that leaves patrons thrilled to the point that they become fiercely loyal and a viral sales force for your business. But some companies, when they go against conventional thinking, have bridged that gap. During a yearlong consulting engagement, I found myself staying at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver, Canada, for three days per month. I tended to arrive at the same time, eat breakfast, have dinner after my business meetings, and then retire for the evening.

The service was always impeccable, but I must admit I expected it to be that way, given the relatively steep room charges I was paying for the privilege of staying on the Gold Floor.

I liked the hotel but was not wild about it. The signs of my relative discontent were written on the walls: I tried the Four Seasons now and then, and perhaps most tellingly, never felt compelled to broadcast a sense of pleasure about the Fairmont to friends/family/colleagues. I was happy there, but happy isn’t thrilled.

But that would change.

On one particular visit to the Fairmont, accompanied by a colleague from MSCO, I took a late flight out of JFK and arrived at the hotel at 2 a.m.

The night staff had never seen me before, but to my surprise, they all knew my name.

“Good evening, Mr. Stevens.”

“Is everything satisfactory, Mr. Stevens?”

“Is there anything special that you require, Mr. Stevens?”

My colleague and I took seats in the lounge to have a cup of tea before retiring. Struck by the fact that I was treated as family by people who were virtual strangers, my colleague felt compelled to decipher the mystery. She took her curiosity to the front desk.

“Pardon me, but how do you all know Mr. Stevens by name?” she asked, pointing in my direction.

She was advised that when a member of the Fairmont President’s Club Elite Level is scheduled to arrive, the guest’s photo is circulated to the staff so that they can address the VIP by name.

“Where do you get the photo?”

“We simply Google the person or ask the guest’s office to send us one.”

The Fairmont Waterfront did not want guests to be satisfied. They wanted me and my fellow loyalists to be thrilled. That level of detail, of determination to make me feel like a member their family, to prepare on such a personal level for my visit—that was the tipping point.

Vegas-Style Thrills

Steve Wynn understands the power of thrilled and how to deploy it to build stunningly successful businesses.

To many, Wynn is a billionaire entrepreneur who runs a gaming empire. But beneath the surface of that superficial description lies an Impresario of the Thrill—a man who understands how to, and why to, take what is considered to be “the gold standard” and then reinvent it to reach an even higher plane. To close the gap between happy and utterly delighted.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Wynn took over his father’s chain of bingo parlors when Wynn Sr. fell victim to heart surgery complications in 1963. After taking the helm, resetting the management compass, and demonstrating sustainable growth in the limited world of bingo, Wynn scanned the horizon for a grander stage.

He found it in Las Vegas. A handful of destinations in the world are magnets for men and women of cosmic ambition: Wall Street, Hollywood, Las Vegas, and Silicon Valley.

Wynn chose Las Vegas. Over time, he purchased interests in a portfolio of Vegas gambling operations. He recognized that, for all of its unique characteristics, Sin City was still very much a relatively tame strip of hotels, neon lights, casinos, and restaurants. Wynn was determined to introduce a new dimension, leaving the millions who visited Vegas annually awestruck and thrilled. He would do so with the 1989 opening of the Mirage, featuring an indoor forest and an outdoor volcano. Hotel/casinos didn’t have forests and volcanoes in their playbooks, but Wynn wasn’t creating a hotel/casino per se, he was unveiling a Thrill Machine. Caught up in the Wynn-orchestrated fantasy, visitors would spend freely and lavishly, exhilarated by the fairy-tale world the maestro created for them.

As the London Times has observed:

Ever since he was climbing up on the bingo tables as a boy to watch his dad, Wynn has wanted to entertain, make money, entertain some more, make more money and entertain, over and over again.

Moving along this continuum, Wynn proceeded to outdo himself, opening the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, complete with a live pirate show, and then the Bellagio, with an artificial lake, dancing fountains, and a world-class art gallery. At a cost of $1.6 billion, the Bellagio was the most expensive hotel/playland on the planet.

As a Thrill Maker, Wynn lives more than anything else by the cryptic philosophy his father imparted to him: “Give it schmaltz. They’re not coming to make money, they’re coming for the show. So jazz it up.”

Wolfgang Puck: A Chef Who Thrills

Wolfgang Puck, one of my firm’s clients, accomplishes this showman’s feat with aplomb. In a nightly ritual that has become his charming and distinctive signature, the Austrian-born chef moves through the kitchen doors while dinner is in full swing and waltzes through the buzzy spaces of Spago, Cut, or any one of the other restaurants in his empire that he happens to be presiding over that day.

Many chefs work the room, but Wolfgang sees it as anything but work. The restaurant is crowded wall to wall with his guests—the people he is determined to thrill on multiple levels—and that is precisely what he does, roaming from table to table (confectioner’s sugar on his arms, spots of tomato sauce on his uniform), meeting and greeting, and taking in the lovely theater of delighted people enjoying his delicious creations.

I have marveled at this ever since my first visit to a Puck restaurant more than two decades ago. After all of his success, his fame, his wealth, nothing has changed. On a recent visit to Spago in Beverly Hills, Puck cooked dinner for my wife, Carol, and me, bringing out sumptuous plates of food and watching, like a giddy teenager, as we relished everything. The more we ate, the more we protested that there was no room in our stomachs for more, the more he cooked and cooked and delighted in every bite we took.

Although we flattered ourselves that we were getting the VIP treatment because our firm served his, the truth is everyone in the room was being treated as the only guests in the house. All were thrilled.